September 21, 2014Movie Review The Maze Runner by Geoff Hudson If Hollywood producers are trying to recreate the success of the dystopian science-fiction thriller The Hunger Games with The Maze Runner, they’re going to be in for a rude awakening. There are just too many let downs in the film to make it a contender. Indeed, we’re puzzled and bewildered by the jumbled chaos of The Maze Runner, which spends 90 percent of its time setting up a situation to which it has the most preposterous ending—if one can call it an ending. . Based on James Dashner’s novel (2007) with a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, and T.S. Nowlin, the movie hits a lot of speed bumps. It has an intriguing start but begins to lag after the first hour. The flick begins as Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) rides a subterranean elevator that opens on a forested landscape filled with a group of teens who welcome him to what they call the Glade. He has no clue as to how he got there and can’t remember his name. He sees that the Glade is surrounded by a gigantic rock wall that the boys call the Maze. The teens are trapped because the maze changes every night preventing escape. Despite that, some of the boys have become Runners who dash through the maze trying to map its path in an effort to find a way out. Those Runners have to tackle the Maze during the day because at night the stone labyrinth turns into a hive for giant spider-scorpion creatures called Grievers (laughable mechanical monsters that drool a lot to scare us). Boys who have gone into the Maze at night never return. To make things worse, the boys begin fighting among themselves. Thomas wants to go exploring to find a way out while Gally (Will Poulter) wants to keep things as they are. And then one day, a young girl (Kaya Scodelario) shows up. She thinks she remembers Thomas and he thinks he remembers her. He has dreams, and she has dreams. But nothing engaging or romantic comes of it. This is Wes Ball’s first film and it shows. Ball, who previously was an animator, and who directs and provides special effects for The Maze Runner, seems bogged down by poor editing, He appears more interested in special effects than in presenting a solid story with captivating players. The editing looks rushed with camera shots that are so fast and fuzzy that it’s often difficult to tell what’s going on—especially in the fight scenes with the huge metallic Griever spiders. That’s irritating, but so too is the lack of information about the characters. We don’t find out anything about their motivation, past history, how they came to be in The Glade-- nothing that would make us care about them. The characters are just stereotypes, and their dialogue sounds as wooden as is the acting. Finally, Thomas takes a group of the boys with him to attempt an escape, and we think we’re going to find out why and what has been going on. No such luck. The end of the film is ridiculous and nonsensical with a character that couldn’t logically be in a scene, a death that isn’t a death, and an escape that isn’t an escape. The ending leaves one hanging with the pronouncement that everything that went on was only “Phase 1” and that “Phase 2” will follow. The makers of the film obviously are preparing for a sequel. After this weak movie, though, I don’t know how many are going to sign up for the next installment. I can only imagine that the end of “Phase 2” will again leave us hanging with a declaration to watch out for “Phase 3.”